Michael Smolens: California continues pursuit to harness elusive wave energy

The potential to generate clean, renewable energy from the ocean is vast, possibly rivaling wind and even solar power.

Yet research and development of harnessing waves and tides for electricity have lagged behind other alternative forms of energy.

But encouraging advances in research and development have been realized in California pilot projects off the coast of San Diego — in conjunction with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography — and more recently at the Port of Los Angeles.

The pursuit of ocean energy received a boost two years ago when state Sen. Steve Padilla, D-Chula Vista, carried a bill calling on state agencies to study the feasibility, costs, benefits and impacts of wave and tidal energy. Senate Bill 605 was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a proponent of developing ocean energy technology since his days as mayor of San Francisco.

Padilla said the study and pilot projects were relatively small steps, but showed wave energy can be part of the mix in helping the state meet its clean-energy goals.

“I think it’s satisfying, in terms of what some people think and what I think, that there’s tremendous potential,” Padilla said this week.

Nevertheless, Padilla and others have said that wave energy had taken a back seat to other forms of alternative energy for some time.

“We are kind of where land-based wind was 20 or 30 years ago,” Tim Ramsey, marine energy program manager at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office, told CalMatters in 2023 after Padilla’s bill passed.

For years, technological, geographical and financial hurdles impeded wave and tide energy development.

A potential big obstruction surfaced this year with the Trump administration’s cuts to alternative energy funding and overall discouragement of green energy in favor of fossil fuel development, such as oil, gas and coal.

But progress achieved in ocean energy research isn’t going away, though hopes of greater development may have to wait for a big change in policy, probably from a different administration.

Padilla acknowledged the change in federal support for alternative energy from President Joe Biden to Trump. But he said California still has its own mandates to reduce carbon emissions and has primary jurisdiction over the permitting for projects — and that the Pacific Ocean will always be there.

“I think none of that changes, regardless of who’s in the White House,” he said.

Having said that, he added that California needs to address its own regulatory burdens that slow down projects.

The wave and tidal technology varies, with some projects using a floating device while others are submerged and still others are anchored on the coast. All of them use the movement of waves, tides and currents to power machinery such as turbines or pistons to generate electricity.

Investments in wave energy research are being made around the world — from Scotland and Norway to China and South Korea. A large wave energy buoy was deployed last year at a U.S. Navy test site in Hawaii.

In 2022, a company called CalWave, working with Scripps, completed an open-water test of a small, submerged wave energy converter off the coast of San Diego. The U.S. Department of Energy gave a positive review of the pilot project, saying it was California’s “first at-sea, long-duration wave energy project.”

The device survived two extreme storms and remained operational for 99 percent of the time it was deployed, according to the DOE report.

“This deployment’s success demonstrates that a wave energy device can efficiently generate clean electricity from ocean waves, a critical step in proving the industry’s commercial viability,” the report said.

As with offshore wind farms, environmentalists have raised concerns about the impacts of wave projects on marine life.

The DOE report said the San Diego test, which was small, “showed no significant concerns to the local marine wildlife or ecosystem. . .”

At the Port of Los Angeles, a company called Eco Wave Power has begun operating an onshore wave energy project installed on an abandoned wharf. The project at AltaSea, a nonprofit ocean institute at the port, involves a row of large blue floaters in the water, attached to infrastructure on the wharf, that move up and down with wave action to create energy.

It’s the first onshore wave power project in the country, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The pilot project can generate up to 100 kilowatts of power — enough for about 100 homes — and company officials told the Times the ultimate goal is to install steel floaters along the port’s 8-mile breakwater to generate about 60 megawatts of power, or enough for about 60,000 homes.

Backers of the project say it will be less expensive to build and easier to maintain and hook up to the power grid than offshore ocean energy projects. Further, potential conflicts with shipping lanes are not an issue.

While some areas may be more suitable than others to capture ocean energy — experts often mention Washington state, Oregon and Northern California — the seas are in almost constant motion everywhere.

The obstacles are great, but the potential is mindboggling.

The theoretical annual energy potential of waves off the coasts of the United States was estimated to be as much as 2.64 trillion kilowatt-hours, which is equal to about 63 percent of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

People have long been fascinated by the awesome power of waves.

In the landmark 1966 surfing film “Endless Summer,” filmmaker and narrator Bruce Brown sought to put the scope of massive waves at Waimea Bay in Hawaii into everyday context.

“If you could harness the power of one of these waves, you can light a city for a week,” he said.

It seemed fanciful, and supporting data was nonexistent. But maybe he was on to something.

 What they said

Shawn VanDiver (@shawnjvandiver), a San Diego Navy veteran and president of @AfghanEvac, which conducts relocation efforts for Afghans who assisted the U.S. military.

“I was at the courthouse today for a #BattleBuddies action and I watched an ICE employee walk out of the detentions office wearing a shirt that said ‘Consider choosing violence.’ Think about that.”